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Explosions and ever-rising fireballs lit up the night sky Tuesday on a busy highway north of Toronto, the intense heat melting cars, killing motorists and leaving in its hellish centre the remains of two fuel trucks and at least four transport trucks.

Commercial truckers were already in the crosshairs of the OPP commissioner after a series of deadly summer crashes in Ontario culminated in what police called the “Armageddon” near Toronto, but a deeper dive into collision statistics suggests truckers are hardly public enemy No. 1.

Since 1995, when 182 people were killed in Ontario collisions involving commercial trucks, the number of licensed truckers has surged by 75 per cent but the number of truck-related deaths had plunged to 109 in 2014, a drop of 40 per cent, according to statistics from Ontario’s Transportation Ministry.

While the ministry doesn’t have final data for 2015, 2016 or 2017, before Tuesday’s crash that killed at least three people there had been only 67 deaths this year involving truckers on the 400-series highways and rural roads that the OPP patrols, the force told The London Free Press.

At that rate, the death toll involving trucks would reach 81 by year’s end, though that excludes crashes in cities like Toronto and London where local police patrol the roads.

It’s not only the declining death count that’s at odds with the notion that truckers have grown more reckless.

From 2009 to 2014, truck drivers involved in fatal collisions were more than twice as likely to be driving properly as were car drivers, ministry figures show.

But those statistics weren’t mentioned by OPP Commissioner Vince Hawkes when, this week, he compared commercial trucks to “missiles” on Ontario’s highways and laid blame at the heavy foot of a trucker who allegedly was driving too fast Tuesday to safely stop as he approached flashing emergency lights and traffic slowed by an earlier, smaller collision, his trailer setting off a 14-vehicle crash.

“There’s really no excuse for that transport truck to continue at the speeds that they did and impact the vehicles that we in the (traffic) queue,” Hawkes said.

Transport trucks head east on Highway 401 near London. (MIKE HENSEN, The London Free Press)

“It’s a miracle we don’t have 25 bodies down there.”

Later, he said a growing number of truckers are distracted when they drive.

“Unfortunately, this is what we see time and time again and . . . the trend is getting worse,” Hawkes said, noting commercial vehicles are involved in a quarter of fatal collisions investigated by the OPP. “If the driver is still distracted, whether they’re watching television or they’re texting or they’re eating a sandwich . . . when the traffic is stopped ahead, the devastation is going to happen.”

His stern words came less than a week after he convened a news conference to announce the OPP had charged three truckers in three summer crashes that killed six people.

“This series of horrific collisions is driver inattention at its worst and the most tragic reminder in recent history of the tremendous toll on the lives of innocent citizens when commercial transport truck drivers are not paying full attention to the road,” Hawkes said.

“We are putting drivers on notice that the OPP will pursue every investigative avenue following serious collisions and hold at-fault drivers accountable to the full extent of the law.”

While Ontario issues 100-page reports each year that scrutinize collision data in almost every conceivable way, Hawkes last week only cited two statistics about trucks — collision and fatalities:

In 2015 and 2016, large commercial transport trucks were in 13,668 collisions in which 155 people were killed.

Through Oct. 15 this year, there have been more than 5,000 transport truck-related collisions in which 67 people were killed.

Those stats create the impression truckers are responsible for more than their fair share of death on Ontario roads. But a full review of the ministry data from the last 22 years points to the opposite conclusion: That truckers are killing fewer people on Ontario roads and that their share of blame is smaller than that of other motorists.

Twice asked this week for an interview with Hawkes, the OPP didn’t respond to either Free Press request.

The three summer collisions occurred in an eight-day stretch and its victims included a 14-year-old boy and his mother. The first occurred July 27 on the Hwy. 48 in Georgina, the second July 30 in Chatham-Kent on the Hwy. 401 and the third on the 401 near Port Hope on Aug. 3.

Several other people, including a 10-year-boy, were seriously injured in the crashes.

Earlier, on May 11 on the 401 near Kingston, three men and a woman were killed when their vehicle was struck from behind by a transport truck that failed to stop in a construction zone.

Each of the deaths was tragic, but none had the drama of this week’s massive pile-up south of Barrie on the Hwy. 400, where the exploding fuel tanks cause such huge fireballs that, 12 hours later, authorities were still unsure exactly how many had died or how many vehicles were involved.

The horror can be seen in video taken by a motorist who escaped the carnage, then filmed the terrifying explosions, mushroom clouds of smoke and billowing bursts of flames.

The images place truckers in the middle of disaster, but those images don’t reflect the safety record of commercial drivers, said Stephen Laskowski, the president of the Ontario Trucking Association.

“The visuals of commercial (truck) collisions are absolutely frightening,” he said, but those images don’t show how truckers have improved safety steadily over the decades.

“They share the road with your family and their own families. They do not take that responsibility lightly,” he said.

Asked what he thinks of Hawkes blaming truckers, Laskowski didn’t criticize police, instead saying his association has a shared responsibility with police and the ministry to improve the safety of roads.

“We always need to do better and we do,” he said.

The Ontario Safety League, which advocates for traffic safety, is calling on the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario to conduct a review of deaths on 400-series highways involving both commercial and private vehicles.

“I don’t know what that magic bullet is,” league president Brian Patterson said of the number of traffic-related deaths in Ontario. “Is it fatigue, is it training, is it keeping distractions out of the interior of vehicles?”

The transportation ministry doesn’t finalize annual reports until the coroner’s office finishes investigating collisions in which the cause of death is less than clear, and those probes can last a couple of years, a ministry spokesperson said.

Q: What collision data is available for 2015 and 2016? What does it show about the safety of truckers?

The ministry published preliminary data, but it’s much more limited in scope than its annual reports. That said, that early data shows the number of deaths in truck collisions in 2015 and 2016 were 88 and 93, lower than in previous years.

Q: The numbers compiled by the ministry and the OPP are different. Why?

The ministry counts all collisions; the OPP only counts collisions in areas the force patrols, which include 400-series highways and rural roads, but not urban centres.

How is Ontario road safety in general?

Big improvement. Between 1995 and 2014, the number of all licensed drivers rose by 37 per cent, while the number of road deaths fell by 48 per cent.

Preliminary data for road fatalities in 2015 and 2016, if confirmed, may be the lowest rates ever.

In 2014, 54,081 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes, 35,491 fewer than in 1995 and the lowest level since 1964.